September 21, 2018 03:28 PM UTC

Gazette is latest to try--and fail--to explain away Coffman's pro-Trump voting record

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• by: Jason Salzman

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

The conservative Colorado Springs Gazette tried today to argue that U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) isn’t as pro-Trump as his 96 percent pro-Trump voting record would have you believe.

The Gazette argues that the 96-percent score includes “bills most rational members of Congress support, from both parties.”

The newspaper lists 15 examples, including bipartisan measures to provide hurricane relief and reduce opioid addiction.

Trouble is, if you throw out these 15 bipartisan votes from Coffman’s list of pro-Trump votes, the Aurora Congressman still has a 95 percent pro-Trump voting score.

And if you subtract 15 more votes, among the 90 House votes on which Trump had a publicly known stance, Coffman’s pro-Trump score is 93 percent.

Coffman’s core problem is that he voted just four times against Trump.

One of those four votes was on an important healthcare bill, as the Gazette points out, but Coffman later expressed support for another Trump-backed bill to kill Obamacare. It was defeated in the U.S. Senate, due to the downward thumb of former Arizona Sen. John McCain.

With Coffman in danger of being washed out of office by the blue wave, the conservative Gazette will try to argue that Coffman isn’t as Trump-loving as he appears, but his pro-Trump voting record won’t prove the point.